Pam: I don't want to go off on an EM tangent here particularly, but I will say that EMI is largely character driven (and so B-plot, I guess), whereas EMII has a
lot of A-plot. This probably explains why EMI is rather shorter than EMII. It also shows that the kind of stories that I write aren't necessarily the stories that I would claim to prefer to read.
Carol: you've phrased my 'fears' perfectly!
But I'd prefer to believe that people are saying what they mean here. Makes me feel better!
I confess, the motivation for the poll in the first place was a general feeling of insecurity; why write A-plots if that isn't what keeps most people happy?
The answer to
that is, however, that I don't necessarily write stories for the readers. Yes, I love it when people tell me that they like something, and it is vastly reassuring to be told that you have done something well. However, the decision to write in the first place is, in many ways, a selfish and self-indulgent one. I write a story because I like the story. I hope others will too, but that's the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Although I suspect that there is an element of the joking in the demand for smoochies, I would like to make two points. (1) I do have a tendency to take things at face value, which sometimes makes it hard for me to spot a joke (which is my problem, not anyone else's), (2) you need the 'cultural' background to understand that the joke might be there in the first place. Given that I was not a regular visitor to the other mbs, I'm not sure that I have / had that.
Chris (who hopes that this doesn't make her sound like she's whingeing because she's not, not really
)
